Elegy On Toy Piano

Fire Is Speaking

Fire Is Speaking Fire is speaking again, Everything belongs to me. A bird flies over—not even a challenge. A handkerchief, a window, a war. A little girl helped up the steps into a train. Two crazy winos arguing about the formation of the universe, one says, Time folding, the other, You’re not listening. A valentine out of paper doilies with blunt scissors. It’s almost eighty years ago, the tree wants to tell how far it’s come, the mountain how fast it can run, the past in the form of a locomotive knows it must switch from coal to electricity to ever catch up. A book of poems by Apollonaire left on a table. No, a man comes back to get it before the table is removed, the floor torn up, the whole building knocked down. Zephyrs over a doorway— you don’t see work like that anymore, in a different form they lived in Sophocles. And how to get at the fullness of life, its quivering and rush first with blunt scissors then symbolic notation? Sometimes fire seems to be elsewhere but it is only resting. I cannot live without you says the soldier gripping the little girl’s hand only she is no longer a little girl, it is 20 years later, could this be the one who the valentine was for? May, the air full of pollen, kerchoo. 16 A handkerchief changes hands. The argument about the universe heats up. They’re not crazy winos, they’re retired emeritus professors of theoretical physics. One was a soldier in another country long ago. Sheep are blocking the road. A train goes by and a little girl holds a cut-out heart to the window and he holds the reins of his horse, happy he doesn’t have to shoot anyone at the moment and no one is shooting back and to gallop over the hill to the sea. What would his life have been if he hadn’t gone back for the book? It is the scary face of chance looking at him but when he sees the girl at the table, it’s the other face. A cheek, a handkerchief, a wave. A baby, a conservatory, a garden. She sits at the piano with the lid closed. A sigh falls from the sheet of music. The train lets out a blast of steam. An old man walks in a garden checking his head for equations until a girl runs towards him with a paper heart. A horse the color of smoke. Better not why not yes now. Must you go so soon. She takes off his glove. Handprint on the window, handprint on the sky. 17 ...